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Hair is great. It doesn’t matter if you have a dye disaster, if a deranged scissor-wielder hacks indiscriminately or if you have just stepped out of a hurricane. Its all fixable. I’ve had numerous follicle failings, including The Worst Haircut Ever and an attempt at dying my naturally auburn hair blonde, that ended up bright orange. But, a few month later all was forgotten, hair grows, dyes fade and you can always brush your hair. I now keep my hair below shoulder length, with a heavy fringe and various shades of red. But, what do you do with it practically, on a daily basis? I’m a huge fan of the ponytail, its my failsafe ‘do of choice and makes me look younger and smarter with one hairband.

The magazines seem to be full of loose, unstructured hairstyles at the moment, and while they look effortless, they can be pretty daunting. My current favourite is an undone chignon. It’s based on a low bun but works really well on mid-length to long hair. No doubt there’s a really complicated way of doing it that involves a can of hairspray, backcombing that would daunt Bardot and super straighteners, but I have never been good at the complicated ‘dos. This is how I wear the unstructured low bun.

This can be fancied up a bit by taking two side sections and plaiting them before making a start on the chignon, then working them into the ponytail.

First, tie your hair into a ponytail at the nape of your neck, not too tightly. Then pull the band down a little, depending on how large you want the chignon to be. The closer the band is to your skull, the neater and smaller the effect will be. Fold the ponytail up, so that it’s almost tucked into the hair, as if you are doing one of those twisted pony’s. And fold the looser sides in to cover the ponytail, like folding a fajita. Using grips, fix it in place as neatly as you want it.

If you have added plaits or twists you fix those in with the grips.

There we have it. A simple chignon, takes less than 5 minutes in total.